Anticipation vs Reality: How Heroes has fallen

The anticipation of something new or something that you look forward to can overwhelm your thoughts. The sense of anticipation slows down time and every mundane minute feels like one long episode of America’s Next Top Model: it is never going to end. While time slows to a crawl, every human sense becomes heightened and more aware. The smell of bacon in the morning becomes sharper. The taste of orange juice becomes tarter. The humming of the fridge becomes louder. The colours of the newspaper print becomes brighter. It is like every cell in your body is alerted to the anticipation of a particular event and every ounce of your being is geared and focused to welcome the sensation of being in that moment.

I have noticed over my short lifetime that very rarely does the anticipation match reality. The anticipating is much more exciting than the participating. I bring forth the evidence:

1) Whenever you crave your favourite meal or food, you can go all day thinking about that meal, but when you finally sit down to eat, the actual experience is a bit dull in contrast to the mental drooling that preceded.

2) The anticipation of going on a date rarely matches the date itself. You can spend all day wondering how things are going to go, what the person is going to be like, and often those expectations are too hard to match. Dates more often than not fizzle immediately at the start. I am so glad that I don’t have to make my way through the dating scene anymore.

3) As a young boy during Christmas, I would work myself into a frenzy wondering what gifts I was about to receive. The anticipation of what was under the shimmering gift wrap was beyond the elation I felt when I actually laid my eyes on my present.

4) I have patiently anticipated every new Vancouver Canuck season during the summer. Thoughts of how the team would perform or who would do what or what it would feel like if the Canucks raised the Cup rarely matched the fleeting moments of joy that were felt during the season. I was crushed after waiting all summer to see Igor Larionov and Vladimir Krutov play for our team. I was crushed after waiting all summer to see Alexander Mogilny play with Pavel Bure for our team. I was crushed after waiting to see Mark Messier play for our team. I was crushed by disappointment of experiencing my first Stanley Cup playoff game in 1994, game 3 versus the New York Rangers, in a game which saw Pavel Bure score on a breakaway only later to be kicked out of the game because of him throwing an elbow, which then was proceeded by the Brian Leetch and Alexei Kovalev show (where Kovalev absolutely undressed Kirk McLean). I had anticipated this game for so long. I was crushed by the many fruitless years of Dan Cloutier, Todd Bertuzzi, Markus Naslund, and Brenda Morrison. I waited through long regular seasons anticipating a great playoff run only to be crushed by continual underachievement.

4) I was disappointed by the fourth Star Wars movie. I had waited forever wondering what this new movie would look like. I had been traveling Europe during the summer it was released and after a long flight home from Portugal, my friends picked me up from the Vancouver airport and we drove straight to Silvercity Richmond to watch the Phantom Menace. Suffice to say my enormous anticipation of this movie could not be matched (let’s just ignore the unhealthy amount of devotion I have to Star Wars).

5) Often our expectations cannot hope to survive because we expect more. Something new can catch us off guard because we had no previous expectations. The second time through we have preconceptions and demand similar results. Nowhere is this more evident than in music. I wonder if a band can possibly follow up a great album with another great one, simply because our expectations are different. I remember listening to every single track off of Pearl Jam’s Ten back in grade ten. I was flush with excitement for their second album in grade eleven. I remember my friends and I bought the CD at A&B Sound during lunch and we immediately went to my friend’s house to listen to the entire album (*ahem* that did not mean I missed school). VS was a decent album, but it was no Ten. And looking back fourteen years, what I remember clearly is not actually listening to the tracks. I vividly recall continuous discussions about Pearl Jam leading up to the release date. I remember the elaborate planning involved for acquiring the disc. I even remember which friend’s house we went to listen. I can even recollect the exact moment where we pulled up into his driveway in a white Sprint. Anticipation can be that powerful.

I deal with disappointment in two ways. I get depressed or I get angry. I got depressed after the Canucks lost game seven in the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals. I was so forlorn that I went straight home from the Pacific Coliseum thus missing the riots that my friends got to see firsthand. I got angry after the new Star Wars trilogy was finished. I lament all those times bands like Guns N Roses, Weezer, The Killers, and Radiohead failed to follow through on their newest offerings. Damn Guns N Roses! Appetite For Destruction was amazing. Use Your Illusions I & II could have been put together into one album.

The second season of Heroes has been one major disappointment. The sense of anticipation of the season 1 finale was much too great. I don’t think the show could have ever delivered something big enough in that final hour. The actual finale episode was a big letdown, and that air has continued to hiss out of this show well into five episodes this year. Kristen Bell’s appearance in the latest episode was underwhelming. There are too many storylines that are going on at once and there is no focus to the show. Snippets of a plot here and there has caused this show to meander. No longer do we get a sense of elation of discovering character’s powers as they themselves discover what the can do. There is very little intrigue or mystery. Most of the time I am asking myself "What the heck is going on?" out of confusion. I am almost at the point that I no longer care about any of the characters.

Hiro is trapped in feudal Japan, but really he is trapped a storyline that is boring and offers no compelling moments considering Hiro had the majority of those sort of moments last year. HRG does not seem as sinister. Mohinder still sucks. Parkman now seems like a wimpy character to scared to take charge. Sylar doesn’t scare me. I could go on and on about the failings of this season. I thought the show may have rounded a corner last week, but so many plotlines are still in disarray.

Last year this show took charge by using conventional comic book storylines that had a freshness to it, because there wasn’t anything like this scale being down on television. Last year established some great characters with some really cool powers. All that goodwill and great foundation that was laid last year has been swept away by the winds of disappointment. My anticipation of this second season was maybe too high. The reality of these episodes makes me yearn for last year’s newness and originality. I don’t know if there are enough heroes to save this mess of a show.

PS
One of the few things that I can remember that exceeded my expectations were the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I was a huge fan of the books and I loved the first movie. Each movie thereafter managed to wow me and surpass all expectations I had. My anticipation for the Return of the King was astronomical and the movie delivered in spades.